


Quiet Powers

by DragonBandit, laughablyunimportant



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Applied Behaviour Analysis, Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Meltdown, Neurodivergent Wanda Maximoff, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Self-Esteem Issues, conversion therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 06:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18068720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit, https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughablyunimportant/pseuds/laughablyunimportant
Summary: Don't fidget. Don't speak so quickly. Look when you listen. Powers are meant to be kept to yourself.The X Institute promises parents something society at large has told them is impossible: normalcy. Enter the Institute a mutant, and come out the other side just like everyone else.But as the children of the Institute know, you can keep powers quiet, but you can't take them away.And when they finally bubble to the surface? It's going to make one hell of a bang.





	Quiet Powers

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a set of discord messages between Twitch and me. I then cleaned them up (A bit) and gave them an ending. Due to this, the story kind of jumps around and is extremely choppy as we jumped heads and fought with Discords insistence that every message be under a certain character count. 
> 
> Think of it as the narrative equivalent of a sketch. Albeit one that’s been coloured in. 
> 
> About the tags: The X-Institute is not a nice place. They do very not nice things. The Real world equivalent of what the X-Institute are doing is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) which is still used on autistic children to force them to behave more neurotypically. A lot of the techniques used in ABA are similar to conversion therapy or abuse. Most of it is sort of skipped over in the story, but be careful if you need to.

Mutants make up 1% of the population. It doesn’t sound like a lot, except that 1% of the human population has red hair. The civil rights movements have been fought and won. Fought and lost. Mutants are… not accepted, not really, but they are tolerated. 

And for those parents who really cannot live with their mutant children, who want their little girl and boy back to the way they were before the X-Gene turned them into something else… 

There are places they can go. A discreet phone call, an allocation of funds, and little John or Jane will be accepted with loving arms to the Institute where they will be made human again. Made normal. 

In the institute the carers dye Peter’s hair as Auburn as his sisters. They make the two of them swallow pills and inject things into them to stop the world being so slow, and to stop Wanda from reaching out and playing with probability like a particularly favoured toy.

Peter fidgets. The drugs make him slow and lethargic, but his fingers tap-tap-tap on the desk, his feet shift and slide and kick the legs of any table or chair he’s close enough to. The doctors start strapping his limbs down until he learns to stop. 

Wanda gets lost inside herself. Not the red haze. She can’t turn her powers even on her own mind, anymore. But you don’t need powers to make a world in your mind, and she has to do something with this mental muscle she’s been using all her childhood. So she has conversations. She visits places and people and does things that no one else knows about. Not even the other people she has the conversations with. 

She’s so used to layering her reality with the other world, the mental landscape of everyone around her, that she can’t help doing the same with this new, imaginary world she works so hard to maintain. Sometimes she’s so focused on it, she forgets to pay attention to what’s happening outside of her imaginary world. (That was hardly every a problem before; the mind usually at least hinted at what the body was doing)

“Why can’t you be more like your sister?” the adults tell Peter. 

Children are meant to be seen after all, and never heard. 

They have been here since they were five years old. Peter barely remembers a life outside of the Institute. And if Wanda remembers anything… she’s not enough there to share it. 

Kurt has bracelets around his wrists with an electric current running through them to stop his teleporting. There’s an ache in his teeth and jaws that only goes away when he takes the bracelets off at night. Every day before he is allowed to speak to another human being he has to tie his tail to his tummy, and slather his face and hands in makeup to hide the blue. His tail has sores where the straps dig into the skin. His fur is shaved and plucked, and eradicated from his body as soon as it has a chance to grow.There is nothing that can be done about his hands and feet, and he overhears the doctors talk lovingly about surgery after his check ups. 

Scott is blind. They can take away his power, but his vision goes with it. Out of the four of them, he’s the success story. Their poster child if they ever made posters. Out of the four of them, Scott’s the only one allowed to go to school outside of the Institute. He gets terrible migraines. Awful things that tinge the whole world red and black and make him cry from how much it hurts. To feel the trapped energy building inside his skull and behind his eyes but having no way to get rid of it. 

There is a price to being normal. But if you try hard enough, if you power through the pain, the reward on the other side is worth it. 

 

* * *

 

**THREE YEARS AGO**

 

They’re allowed to play together, to socialise, have free time outside of lessons. The Institute knows how important it is for children to develop interpersonal skills as they develop. 

The room is nice. A bit like the kindergarten classrooms Peter barely remembers. Blocks, colouring books, dolls and a wooden train set. He’s too old for all of them, almost 13 but at least it is something to do that isn’t rock on his heels staring at the endless white walls of his room. They’re monitored of course, but so long as none of them try to escape, or break the rules they’re sure no one is paying much attention. 

“I have a brother,” Scott says. He’s holding onto a toy soldier, feeling the curves of the plastic face. They’ve taken away his sight again, and this time everyone is sure it’s permanent. His voice drops, hushed, “he’s like me. He makes energy come out of his body. He’s going to rescue us.”

Scott’s been saying that since he got brought in here. That was at least a year ago. But the bit about his brother having a power is new, and it makes Peter actually pay attention to him. 

“I have a mama and a papa.” Kurt says. He stutters a little when he’s wearing the bracelets. So he stutters all the time. “Mama was blue. And Papa had a tail.” His voice is just as quiet, whispered over the train set. 

Scott and Peter inch closer to him, picking up bits of railroad for the camera. 

“They loved me.” Kurt says. A bone deep conviction that sounds like it hurts. 

The Institute is fond of telling them that no one could possibly love them until they were fixed. Made normal. 

Peter eventually realises that Kurt is looking at him, and Scott’s sort of got his head aimed in the right direction. He swallows around a lump in his throat, and shakes his head. 

“Mom was normal.” 

“Dad wasn’t,” Wanda’s voice rings out. Peter jerks, staring at her. It’s the first thing she’s said in weeks. The first time she’s looked at him instead of seeing through him. 

“You remember dad?” Peter asks. 

“He called you Pietro,” Wanda says. Her eyes go hazy, looking into a shining past that Peter can’t see. “His boyfriend was like us too.” 

Peter can’t stifle the reflexive flinch. It’s never been outright said, but they all know that the Institute thinks that there’s only one right sexuality. And Peter’s starting to think that it’s not the one that he has. He tries not to think about it, and tries to hide it around the adults. He doesn’t want anymore tests. He doesn’t think he can take it. 

“What did they do?” Kurt asks. 

Wanda’s barely paying attention. “Dad moved metal. His boyfriend could read minds.” 

They’re all quiet for a bit. Letting it sink in. 

Until Kurt asks, “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

“They are,” Scott answers. “They have to be.” 

 

* * *

 

 

**PRESENT DAY**

 

Azazel is not surprised to wake up and find Mystique staring into a mirror. Her skin is a darker blue, her red hair made dark and fluffy, framing the white markings that Azazel had carefully cut into his newborns face to protect him.

And what a protection it has done. The only time he sees his son's face is when his wife marks how old he must be now, and what he must look like. 

He comes up behind Mystique and hugs her. She’s changed her body and height too. She only comes up to his collarbones now, and a tail pokes Azazel’s bare calves. 

“He’s fourteen today,” Mystique say, looking the image they make in the mirror. Father and son, unless you know the truth. 

Azazel kisses her cheek. “I will go looking today.” As he does every year. Today he can do nothing else but look. 

His son had teleported away from them, and Azazel must scour the Earth until he and Mystique can hold him in their arms once again. 

“Do you think he remembers us?” 

“He must.”

Mystique scoffs, glaring at him through the mirror. “We haven’t seen him for seven years! I don’t even know if he really looks like this! And what if it turns out he did pick up my mutation too? How are you going to recognise him when he could look like anyone on the planet?”

“I will recognise him. Even if he is purple and covered in spots I will know my son,” Azazel promises. As he does every year. “As I know my wife even when she is pretending to be the president.”

He gets a shaky smile for his efforts. It’s more than he had expected. Mystique shifts her scales to her natural form. 

“I’m coming with you,” Mystique says, as she does every year. 

Azazel presses another kiss to her cheek. “I would never think of refusing you.” 

And perhaps this year Azazel’s prayers will finally be answered, and at the end of the day, he will hold his son in his arms, and wish him a happy birthday. 

 

* * *

 

Erik has sat shiva for his son and daughter and their mother. Car crash, he had been told later. Freak accident, all three of them dead before the ambulance had even arrived. 

He had sat in grief for a long time, unable to think of anything save the fact his family had died in a box of metal and he hadn’t been able to save them. 

Truthfully it had only been Charles at his side that had stopped Erik doing something terrible. 

Every year, on the eve of that accident, he visits their graves and cleans them of the weeds and filth that has accumulated since his last visit. He doesn’t visit anymore. Even ten years later, it hurts too much. 

“Hello Wanda, Pietro, Magda.”

He sets the bouquet of lilies on Magda’s grave, and the boxes of chocolates on the graves of Pietro and Wanda. Silver for Pietro, Red for Wanda. 

“Charles sends his love.” 

(There had to be a reason why Erik hadn’t torn several heads off when his children went missing) 

 

* * *

 

Alex thinks he’s going to die of old age before he works out what the fuck all these legal documents mean. He scrubs at his eyes, trying to make sense of the thick legalese spread in layers across the cheap dining room table. 

He’d been in juvie, got his act together and joined the army, come home to find his parents dead and his brother in the system. The system refuses to make it easy for Alex to find him. Something about the wishes of his parents, or his foster parents. Alex doesn’t even know. 

Every step he finishes is just another start to another ream of paperwork he has to fill out. Another form to hand into the correct department. 

Alex is just about ready to scream. 

“Go to bed,” Angel tells him. Alex flips her off. 

“Seriously, Alex,” Darwin adds. “At least eat something.”

“Yes Captain,” Alex says, sarcastic and spiteful even as he flips the binder holding Scott’s papers closed. He’ll be back here in a few hours, when sleep won’t come and they all know it. 

But loathe as he is to admit it, Angel’s right. Alex is exhausted. He needs to sleep. He can’t fill out the stupid documents when the letters are swimming before his eyes. 

Scott will just have to wait for another day. Alex tries not to let the guilt hurt too bad when he finally sets down the chewed to shreds pen. 

 

* * *

 

Marie is another success story. A cured mutant, released into the world permanently, with quarterly check ups. 

All she has to do is never touch anyone, never get close. Not much different than her mutant life, really. 

She bumps into someone. 

Literally bnumps into him, enough that she can feel the itching under her skin of not just energy, but something else. Something new. 

She’s only ever got that with the other kids in the facility. 

It’s gone too fast to try it out. So she has no ground to stand on when she blurts out, “You’re one of us!”

But the guy she’s bumped into gives her a royal scowl before holding his hand out and saying, “Names Logan. Who the fuck are you?”

 

* * *

 

It takes Marie a good three months to realise that she and Logan are something that’s going to stay. They’re living out of Logan’s truck, narrow bunks bolted to the walls. The concept of modesty not forgotten but definitely held to a laxer standard than Marie's had… ever. 

Marie’s been shirtless in front of him! She’s been in nothing but a bra and a pair of his swim shorts!! (It had been a really hot day, and the ocean had been right there. Logan had pushed her into the water with the end of a stick. )

“I don’t know what the Institute would have done with you,” Marie says. It’s a quiet evening, just the two of them and the wood fire. Her belly already nicely full from the frozen sausage Logan unearthed from the ice box. 

She’s watching Logan whittle a block of wood down with his claws, silently trying to guess what shape the block is going to be in when he’s done. So far she’s yet to guess right. 

Her last meeting with the Institute was meant to be weeks ago, and she’s now almost half a country away and running out of pills. That doesn’t bother her as much as it used to. 

Logan gives her a side eye. “Institution? Thought you were too little to be one of the kids they abducted to make into weapons.” 

Marie nods, remembering. She’d been the last of them, she thinks, old enough to remember when the lessons had turned from controlling her power for the good of her country, to suppressing it to fit in. She tells Logan this. 

And she tells him the rest of it too. The white rooms, and the doctors, the teachers, how it was so important to not tell anyone about what she could do. She’s never told anyone about the Institution before, but she finds that once she starts she can’t stop. 

The shink-shunk of claws against wood doesn’t change it’s steady rhythm as Logan listens. When she’s finished all he asks is, “Did they hurt you?” And “How many other kids are there?”

Marie struggles to answer the first. “They helped me learn how to control my power. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have my pills.” 

Logan gives her a look, and Marie concedes, “I hated every second of that place.”

The second question she hesitates, “Maybe four, when I was last there. There’s probably more now.” 

Logan holds her gaze for a very long time. “Think you better meet the professor,” he says. And his claws retract with an angry, metallic hiss. 

The first rule Marie learns is no real names on the internet. 

Logan hands over his battered laptop, chat client already running, but the profile’s new. It’s with shaking fingers that she carefully enters in her moniker of “Rogue.”

She’s greeted immediately by what feels like a million people. All like her, powered. She’d never dreamed that there would be so many of them out there in the world. 

Logan’s apparently talked about her on this. A lot. 

 

* * *

 

Erik’s anger shakes the metal foundations of the house. It screws the bearings in Charles’ wheelchair so tight that the frame protests. Charles looks down at the unfinished chess game, and the now darkened tablet in his lap. 

“I told you this would happen,” Erik rages when he paces past Charles again. “I told you! When they couldn’t turn us into weapons they would suppress everything about us that made us unique! The baselines would use drugs and torture and make us just like them. That’s always what this fucking country does to those who are different!”

Charles takes another sip of tea. It’s barely lukewarm now; he’d forgotten about it as soon as Rogue had started speaking.  

“So called land of the free.” 

“I’ll admit this was not what I had in mind when I proposed mutant only schools.” Charles says, mild. 

“Oh? You didn’t realise that this was exactly what they would do as soon as you gave them the slightest opportunity?”

Xavier’s school for the gifted is still only an internet dream these days, no matter how much Charles tries to convince the state of New York that they can trust him with the  lives of several children. At the moment he contents himself with a virtual space. A chatroom where his handful of pupils across the world can log in and socialise with their fellow mutant peers and gain a few desperately needed mentors while they’re at it. 

It was a wonderful idea in principle. Teenagers need to learn control, and just as much they need a space where it’s alright for them to lose that control. All Charles wants is to give them that opportunity. It’s awful to think that someone has turned Charles’ dream into this… conversion and assimilation program. 

“Erik, I understand—”

“No. You don’t understand.” 

Charles concedes that argument. While he and Erik share most of their lives, his husband keeps the details of his time as Shaw’s weapon of mass destruction behind firmly locked doors. It had been the first thing they had campaigned against together, and won. But not before untold numbers of mutant children had lost their lives to experimentation and the battlefield itself. 

“Well, what are we going to do about it”? Charles asks. 

“Kill every baseline on the fucking planet.” 

“Erik.” 

The metal in Charles’ wheelchair screeches. And there’s a lovely harmonic ting as all the silverware in the house goes flying. Charles picks up the tablet, where Rogue is tentatively putting her feet in the shallow waters of the chatroom. So far everyone is being polite, and Charles feels comfortable enough to merely observe as a tuning fork clangs past his ear. 

Minutes later, Erik is much calmer. Charles can feel the edges of his mind, honest to a fine razor point. “I need to talk to Moira,” he says.

“It’s been awhile since we last visited the CIA,” Charles agrees. “I’ll invite her over for lunch, shall I?”

Erik nods, and goes to stride out of the door. No doubt to go somewhere he can work off his anger more productively. 

“Dear,” Charles calls. 

“What?”

“Fix my wheelchair before you go.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s head jerked up a split second before the alarm split the air, a shrieking wail that had Scott immediately slapping his hands over his ears. 

“What the hell is that?” Peter’s up on his feet, angry tone trying to cover the pounding fear in his chest. Precognition. Even if it was only a second. The X Institute doesn’t care about degrees of difference; if they notice that Wanda reacted before the alarm went off…

“Everyone needs to go back to their rooms.” Roberts does her best to project calm, but it’s a little difficult when she has to raise her voice so loudly. And she can’t hide the way she’s gone suddenly pale. 

"What's happening?" Peter asks again, taking it slow, though he doesn't stop outright.

"It's nothing that concerns you," she says, not condescending exactly, but brusque. Like ignoring a dog begging for attention.

Kurt, at least, has the presence of mind to take Scott by the elbow, lead him to follow. Peter fights the flutter of jealousy in his stomach. Every inch of Scott is tense. The only reason he's not totally freaking out is that he can tell it's Kurt's hand on his arm; one advantage to being so thoroughly different.

Peter has to make sure Wanda keeps up. Aside from the first sharp movement, she's not acknowledging the situation at all, slowly shuffling forward without any seeming awareness of her surroundings. He almost thinks he imagined it when she leans close, her voice a bare whisper in his ear, "Someone died."

He stiffens. His hand on her elbow tightens, and he can't find it in himself to loosen his grip. No. No, they wouldn't. The X Institute is supposed to be helping. Even they have to draw the line somewhere.

No one tells them anything. Not that night, or the next morning. Peter doesn't tell either of the other two what Wanda said, trying to convince himself that it didn't really happen, that it's just Wanda losing touch with reality.

Then two new "patients" join their class. "This is Katherine," Preston says, nudging a tall, gangly girl with bracelets similar to Kurt's forward, though there's an ultraviolet sort of hue to them. "And Jubilation." The other girl is...off. Zoned out, but not like Wanda. More like...a doll. It's not that she's not here, just that she doesn't care. 

The second Preston leaves them to free time, bracelet girl grabs zombie girl's hand. Some part of Peter relaxes. All any of them really have is each other; those two are in the same boat.

Kurt's the best at drawing information out. He's always been the friendliest, the most earnest, even as the world has been set to reject him on sight.

"It's Kitty," bracelet girl says, an edge of defiance. "And Jubilee."

"She doesn't seem very celebratory to me," Peter says, skeptical. Kitty glares at him, and somehow manages to make the expression seem nervous.

Her voice is hushed, but clear. "Our friend died last night." Her face screws up. "Well. He wasn't really our friend. But, still."

Kurt and Scott are stock still, presumably in shock.

But Peter. Peter feels...it's like a tremor, that starts in his chest, sinks down to his groin, spreads through his whole body like he's going to shake apart with it. It's his turn to zone out, and by the time he tunes back in, Scott's recovered from his shock and is quietly trying to pull more information out of a reluctant Kitty.

He leans against Wanda, trying to hide his whisper as resting his head on her shoulder. "We're getting out of here."

But fucking Scott--"What was that?" Sharp, suspicious.

"We're going to break out of here," Wanda says, calm as anything. "All of us."

 

* * *

 

They’re going to need their powers to escape, they know that. But the more of them try and regain their powers, the more risk they’re at for being discovered. So it’s tis’ about, who is absolutely essential to the escape? 

Peter argues that it’s him and Wanda. It’s not enough to just evade people, they need to give them a reason not to follow, and Wanda can do that. Then Peter can get them all out with his super speed. 

Scott doesn’t really trust that Peter will come back for them all so long as he gets Wanda out. Kitty doesn’t say so, but she feels the same. She, more tactfully than Scott, suggests that getting through things is more important than getting nowhere fast. Besides, if both twins start changing their behaviour at the same time, it’ll be way more obvious. 

Between Kitty and Kurt, it’s decided on Kurt. They’d like to find a way to disable his bracelets without anyone knowing, but if worst comes to worst, they can just short them out. Kitty’s are much more complicated than a simple electrical current. 

Wanda makes the choice for them in the end. Her eyes go clear and lucid, the way they hardly ever do. She puts her slim hands over the thick steel of the bracelets. 

And hums. 

The bracelets snap. A hairline fracture running all the way through the metal. 

Peter swears, and Kurt looks at Wanda in blatant shock and awe. 

She smiles, serene, already going back into her head. “It’s just a million to one chance,” Wanda says, “million to one chances are easy.” 

The rest of the assembled group look at each other. Kurt stammers out that he’s never teleported that many people before. He’s mildly terrified of the pressure. They’re all relying on him, and he can’t even practice before the day in question. 

But Scott just claps him on the shoulder and says, “You can do it.” 

His tail twitches with built up anxiety. 

(They have no way of knowing that a quiet escape is unnecessary. They’ll have the loudest distraction imaginable when Rogue leads the gifted home to roost.)

 

* * *

 

For Erik the fact that they are mutant children being held captive by baselines is enough to send him to the front lines. 

Rogue talks about two little kids, a boy and a girl, both with red-brown hair. The boy talked a lot, while his sister looked at you with these huge eyes. Neither of them got to speak to her. 

And she talks about another boy, blind thanks to his mutation. He sounds like Scott, but there’s no concrete confirmation. It doesn’t matter to Alex. Somehow he knows that it’s him, even without any proof (Wishful thinking, that happens to be right.)

The one whose identity they know without a shadow of a doubt is the only one whose parents they don’t have a contact for. 

Charles meets Erik's gaze beside the large, clunky computer. "Raven's son."

Erik doesn't say anything.

"Erik..."

"We parted ways for a reason."

"It's her son."

"I don't know what you expect me to do about it. Don't give me that look, I don't know where she is anymore than you."

Charles continues to give him that look.

"What would you like me to do, go to the Brooklyn bridge and spell out in giant metal struts "Raven we need to talk?""

"I had something slightly more subtle in mind."

"You're impossible."

 

* * *

 

"So," Hank says. He plays with the controls of Cerebro, "You're going to power up the machine that we never got to test, and almost scrapped because the one test we did do didn't go that well, then stole from the CIA, and rebuilt in your basement, to find the sister that expressly told you to never use your powers to find her." 

"That's right." Charles adjusts the straps holding the helmet of Cerebro in place. "It's important."

"Okay." Hank says. "That's reasonable." 

Erik loudly thinks that Hank is the only person in the world who would reach that conclusion. Charles mentally points out that Erik can always go back upstairs. 

"And leave you to fry your brain where I can't see? Charles, surely you know me better than that." 

"Are we ready?" Charles asks Hank. 

"Ready. In 3... 2...."

 

* * *

 

Mystique is looking down at the bright lights of the city, champagne glass in her hand when everything goes quiet, and still, in a way that she recognises immediately. 

"Out of my head Charles." She growls. She's already throwing up her mental walls to force him out. 

_ Raven. _ Says the voice inside her mind.  _ Raven it's important _

Next to her Azazel is looking at her. He tilts his head towards the bed, towards the violin case that holds the small arsenal of weaponry they've accumulated over their joint years of working for SHIELD. She shakes her head, silently communicating that it's not dangerous, just annoying. He raises an eyebrow, and Mystique can see his hand subtly going to one of the knives he always keeps on his person. 

"Get out."

_ It's about your son. _

Her shields fall. "You found him?" 

_ You need to come home. I'm sorry, this strains me I can't stay--- _

"You found him? Where is he, Charles!"

But he's already gone. 

Mystique snaps her gaze up. "Pack up, fast as you can," She orders. "And then take us to the flat in New York."

"Do I get to know more than that?" Azazel asks, already plucking the glass of champagne out of Mystiques hands. 

Mystique presses her free hand to her chest, over the gaping hole in her heart. She can feel the familiar rush of adrenaline, along with terrible, awful hope. "Charles thinks he's found our son." 

Azazel inhales, sharp. "Alive?" 

Mystique shakes her head. "Charles didn't have say anything more. We need to go. Now. Please."

Azazel wraps a hand around her waist, teleporting to the bed, grabbing the bag of folders, and his violin case, the two things that they really need. Everything else is replaceable, and then teleports again. 

When Mystique blinks away the red sulfur smoke, she's standing in the familiar entrance hall of the mansion in Westchester. 

“Right,” She says, already striding to the study where she just knows her brother is hiding. 

“Hello Raven, it’s been a long—”

“Cut the crap, Charles,” Raven snaps. “Where’s my son?”

 

* * *

 

Kurt's paranoid that the monitors will realise that his bracelets don't have any electricity going through them anymore. He plays with them, not unusual, trying to hide the hairline fractures that he swears are getting bigger and bigger every day. 

He's been practicing. In the shower. The only place they know there aren't any cameras. It is so. Hard. He wonders if it has always been this hard, or if it's because he's out of practice, or if it is just because his friends are all counting on him with their lives. 

Either way. Pressure. Hey, at least the makeup hides it!!!

 

* * *

 

"Right let's run through this one last time," Darwin says at the front of the van. Marie nods, pulling at her new gloves. Courtesy of a scientist named "Beast" according to Havok. Next to her Logan is scowling. 

"Rogue gets us in, tells them she's sorry for missing her appointments, she was out of town with her boyfriend,"

"Me," Havok interjects, giving Rogue a winning smile. 

Logan grumbles. 

"You distract em—you've got the stuff? Good. and the rest of us come after you and make some noise. Priority on causing chaos and finding the kids. Get the generator powering the null field around the building down so that Professor X and Azazel can get their powers in and make the extraction easier. Get out as fast as we can. Everyone got that?"

"We got it," Tempest says, her wings folding out from her skin, "Are we going or not?"

There’s a nod from everyone in the van. Time to move out. 

Before they go in, Logan presses his hand—his bare hand! To Rogue’s face. She feels the rush of his power settling against her skin as he winces. She jerks backwards. 

“Logan!”

“Wolverine, kid,” he corrects. “Give em hell.” 

 

* * *

 

On the other side of the facility, in their own van, Erik says, “I could take the building down.”

“And lose all that evidence?” Moira retorts, “It’s like you want this to happen again.” 

Erik sneers.

“Stop fighting the two of you,” Charles grumbles, two fingers held at his temple. “This is going to be hard enough to coordinate without the two of you bickering.” 

 

* * *

 

Rogue smiles at Dr Michals, tucked under Havok's arm. the electronics under their clothes shorting out every piece of machinery they walk past. "Doc, you can fix my baby can't you? If I get pregnant, you can make sure that I have the best child any girl could ever want."

Dr Michals takes the bait. Hook line and sinker. He’s always been into that whole breeding the X-gene out crap. 

"I better wait outside," Havok says when they finally get to the point where the doctors want to go through the physical side of the check up. He winks at Rogue, "It's a little stuffy in here, don't you think?" 

 

* * *

 

In the little classroom, on the other side of the Institute, Wanda closes her eyes, and _ smiles. _

Wanda has a secret. The drugs and pills never did anything to her power. They just made her foggy. She hasn’t taken her pills. She’s not foggy anymore. She’s never known her powers when they’re not altered by the drugs, by her disassociation. 

She finds that the fog hides a spiderweb, and she’s the little spider sat in the very center of it. Or maybe she’s a conductor at the head of an orchestra. All these little pieces. All the ways that make a universe tick and tock to the right tune. The probabilities are laid out in front of her. 

She isn’t excited. Isn’t nervous. Isn’t anything. 

"Ms. Roberts," Wanda says. And this is the first time since the pills that she's ever addressed an adult by name. The first time that an adult has been more than a dark, dim shape in her web. "Have you ever had a day where absolutely everything that could have gone wrong did?" 

"No." Roberts says, nonplussed. She's thinking about writing this down in Wanda's chart. 

Wanda reaches out with her power. Her smile serene and cherubic in a way that really they should know not to trust.

"Surprise," She says. 

_ And yanks. _

Havok hits the generator, Rogue takes out the guards and doctors surrounding her, the strike team come through the building, there's another person in her head  _ HELLO!,  _ Ms Roberts is screaming. She broke a heel which broke her ankle. The lights go out, and then the back up lights go out, there are alarms blaring. Every alarm is blaring, Kurt is grabbing everyone he can. Scott and Kitty and Jubilee and Peter and---doesn't reach Wanda before he has to get out before the guard in the room reaches him. Probability is a bitch like that, even for Wanda. 

In the Sanctum Sanctorum, (in every one of them across the globe) every magical artifact in the building goes haywire.

 

* * *

 

Kurt is in pain. Kurt is in a lot of pain. Kurt is in so much pain that he can’t think through it. His cells feel stretched out, not in their right places. A buzzing in his ears that he just knows means that he isn’t going to be getting up anytime soon. 

“Wanda? Wanda! Where is she?”

“Peter, I’m sorry…”

Kurt can feel tarmac under the palms of his hands. That’s wrong. It was meant to be dirt, the forest just outside the institution. But he can smell good, clean air and feel sunlight on his face.

He can also hear the sounds of orderlies nearby. Mr Burburan who sneaks them chocolate when they’ve been good but gets so terribly scary when they’re not. Kurt is dimly aware through the fog of pain that they’re too close. 

He grits his teeth. Somewhere safe, somewhere away from here. Anywhere. There’s a weak puff of blue smoke. They don’t move.

“Kurt!” He hears, sounding so far away…

His head hits the tarmac in a dead faint. 

 

* * *

 

“The children” Charles gasps. “Erik, Azazel, you need to go now, they’re in the car park. Hurry! And don’t kill anybody!”

Azazel grabs hold of Erik, “They have my kid professor,” He says, meaning ‘no promises’, before the two of them vanish in a whirl of red smoke. 

 

* * *

 

They’re going to die. Peter folds his hands into shaking fists, bringing them up to his chest. He’s the oldest. He’s the strongest. So he stands in front of his friends, their backs to the mesh-wire fence that they can’t get through anymore with Kitty’s power leashed and Kurt out of action. 

There is panic staining the back of his mouth with the taste of iron. When he’d had dreams about getting everyone out and being the hero, he hadn’t realized how terrifying being the person everyone's relying on is. He can’t let himself think about that. 

“Peter,” Mr Burburan says. He’s got his hands on a tazer, still hooked into his belt. For now. Peter is so fucking sick of tasers. “Peter, listen to reason. Surely you can see that this isn’t going to go well for you. If you come with us now, the punishment won’t be as nearly as bad if you fight it.”

“Fuck you,” Peter spits. 

They’re going to die. They’re going to die and Wanda’s still inside the building and if they don’t die then they’ll be back in there and that’s worse than being dead. 

Mr Barburan sighs, and he genuinely looks like he doesn’t want to do this, and that’s, that’s really great for him, isn’t it. 

The taser comes up, Peter closes his eyes in a flinch. 

The hum of electricity fills the air but the pain doesn’t come. The smell of sulphur fills the air. 

Peter opens his eyes. 

Mr Burburan is slumped on the ground, the metal barbs of his own taser stuck into his neck. And between him and Peter there are two adults. One with red skin, and a tail, holding two wicked knives in either hand. The other looks more normal, but Peter watches the flex of his fingers, and the way the tazer’s wires flex as well. Not so normal after all. 

The one holding the knives vanishes, appearing behind one of the other orderlies in a puff of red smoke, and Peter averts his eyes before he can see where those knives go. The other guy turns back to look at the huddles mass of Peter’s friends. 

His eyes go wide. 

 

* * *

 

_ Charles. _

His son is dead. His son has been dead and buried for a decade. Erik personally identified the bodies. He buried them. He sat shiva for them. His son is dead.

His son looks so much like Magda when she was his age, it hurts. 

_ Oh my dear. _

“Pietro?”

 

* * *

 

_ “Dad could control metal. And he called you something different. He called you Pietro.” _

Peter swallows. “Dad?”

 

* * *

 

The building is shaking. Brick, and concrete and iron foundations quaking under the strain. 

_ Erik. _ The reprimand manages to carry Charles’s concern underneath the sharp tone. It would be perfectly understandable for Erik to bring down several buildings in his shock, but they cannot afford that right now. 

_ It’s not me.  _ Charles has never felt that particular note of terror from him before.  _ Charles, that isn’t me.  _

“Oh god,” Charles murmurs. He splits his head across everyone in the Institute, looking for the one mind capable of doing this much damage. He flits across the awareness of guards, doctors, the children in the parking lot, Rogue and Havok regrouping with the rest of the strike team to make sure no one is hidden from Charles’s telepathy. 

There. One mind. Bright and burning and oh so powerful and heartbreakingly familiar. 

_ Oh my dear. Wanda. What are you doing? _

_ Hello! _ Wanda just about yells into his mind. The building quakes with the word.  _ Hello Daddy’s boyfriend. _

And then she tugs on the spool of line that connects his mind to hers, pulling him straight inside her mindscape without any chance for him to stop it. 

It looks, for all the world, like MC Escher met Harold and the Purple Crayon. Charles walks through the sketches of rooms, crayon lines denoting the places where the floor meets the wall, and scant pieces of furniture. Though none of it is very distinct. He passes by the over-tall shadows of a child’s impression of an adult, past steel-bright machinery that prickles sharp hurt when he gets too near. The geometry goes sideways and crosswise, never staying on one plane. He can hear whispers, just at the edges of his hearing. 

“Wanda?” Charles calls, “Wanda, where are you?” 

He turns a corner, and is suddenly in a room that is blocked out in bright primary colours. By the wall there are little drawers for storing paper, low chairs and tables made for young children. Murals on the walls that look cheerful until Charles gets close enough to read the words. 

And in the middle of the carpeted floor there is a girl, playing cat’s cradle while a silver hare sits patiently on her lap. Oh. Even through the chubby cheeks of youth, she does look so much like Erik doesn’t she… 

Charles sits down next to her. 

“Hello, Wanda.”

“I’m playing a game,” Wanda says, “Do you want to play with me?” She hasn’t aged a day since he last saw her. She looks exactly like the picture on the wall in Erik’s study. Even her red dress has a little butterfly collar that Charles can remember straightening for her over and over again. 

“Of course.” Charles dutifully takes up the other half of the strings when he’s offered them. They’re multicoloured, with just the perfect amount of friction when they slide against his fingers. 

Wanda weaves a complicated pattern, looking expectantly up at Charles until he learns the proper steps. 

“I like your rabbit,” Charles says. “Does he have a name?”

“He’s called Quicksilver.” 

“He’s very handsome.” 

“Of course you think that,” Wanda answers, “you love daddy and Pietro looks like him.” 

“I suppose that’s very true.” Charles says. He feels more like he is walking in someone’s dream, than the usual mind-to-mind communication that two telepaths can get up to. “Do you know where you are, Wanda?”

“Of course I do. I’m inside my head.” 

“And why are we inside your head?”

Wanda gives him the long suffering look of a child who has realised that adults are really very silly. “I’m playing,” She says, indicating the rope between her hands. 

“I see. And why are we playing?”

The look he receives back is one of polite incomprehension. And alright, that’s probably a little too complicated for a person presenting as a five year old. 

Perhaps he’s being a little too direct. He is inside Wanda’s mind after all. Everything here is a symbol of what she’s trying to tell him. 

Charles gazes down at the mess of string between their hands. Playing… He lets his vision slip sideways, trying to see this as the metaphor it is instead of a solid object. 

And he sees— 

 

* * *

 

Once, when Wanda was slipping between lucidity, Kitty had asked, “What did you say Wanda’s power was again?”

Peter had shrugged, “Chaos,” and Wanda had laughed so hard she thought she was going to die. 

 

* * *

 

—”Wanda, it’s alright. You don’t have to keep using your power,”  Charles says, urgent as he sees that the threads he’s holding in his hands area really the odds of an entire building rusting badly enough to collapse in on itself. 

“But I’m playing.” Wanda protests.

“It’s time to stop playing,” Charles insists. He tries to take the threads out of Wanda’s hands, but Wanda screams at him. 

“I thought you’d understand! You were meant to understand!”

“I do understand,” He tells her, trying in vain to reach her as the shared space of their minds warps and fades around him. She’s kicking him out. “But Wanda, you cannot do this. You’re going to hurt—”

“Get out!”

Charles is once again inside his own mind, with a pounding headache that he suspects won’t leave him for several days. The minutes he spent inside Wanda’s head were only seconds in reality. 

He watches as The Institute collapses in on itself like nothing more than wet sheets of paper. 

 

* * *

 

“Wanda!” Peter screams. 

“Get them all to safety,” Erik orders. The guards have already been dealt with, but who knows how long it will take for them to rally their forces and try again. 

Azazel is already gathering up limbs. The body of Kurt cradled up against his chest with a tenderness that always looks off when Azazel displays it. “Grab onto me,” he tells the teenagers. “Time to get out of here.”

“No! No, Wanda’s still in there! I’m not going anywhere without her!”

“Peter stop being stupid!” Kitty yells back, tears streaming down her face. She grabs him, holding him tight around the wrist before he can run off, just before Azazel teleports the group of them back to the van. 

_ Show me. _ Erik asks of Charles. 

_ No. Erik, it’s too dangerous. I tried. She’s barely aware of anything outside of her mind, and she’s consumed by rage. She might hurt you by accident. _

_ Fuck that. I’m getting my daughter. _

Charles doesn’t argue twice. 

 

* * *

 

Marie is in the dark.There’s not even enough light for there to be a difference when she blinks. She’s in a small alcove that had protected her from being squished when everything went to shit. There’s barely enough room for her in it, just big enough that she can reach out and brace her forearms against the blocks of rubble trapping her here. 

There’s a long rod of iron sticking out of her chest. Oh god it burns. It burns so bad. 

She thinks that she might die here. 

…It would be worth it. If dying here is the price of finding people like her, of knowing that her ability isn’t something shameful, that making friends who have just as wonderful powers as her own…

Dying wouldn’t be that bad… 

Fuck that, she thinks, and it’s in Logan’s voice. 

She’s not out of strength just yet. She can still fight. She is not going to die here. She still has to tell Logan that pineapple doesn’t belong anywhere near a pizza. 

She struggles, pulling the metal out of her chest, screaming with the pain as the wound knits itself together with Logan’s stolen power. He must have known something like this would happen. That’s why he gave her just a little bit of it to store inside herself for when she needed it.

“Kid? Kid!? Where are you?”

“Logan! I’m in here!” Marie cries out, “I’m stuck, help me!”

She hears heavy footsteps run closer to her tiny box. Logan swears, and she’d giggle at the foul language if she wasn’t under what feels like a million tons of rubble. 

“You gotta help me kid!” He yells, “I can’t get you out by myself, not before we run outta time!”

The building shakes. It’s still falling down around them. Marie can feel it dislodge some of the stonework, raining bits of gravel and dirt down on her face. She might die in here after all. 

“I can’t!”

“You can! I ain’t called the Wolverine for nothing!”

Oh. 

Marie’s claws are bone, but they go through the powdered mortar she’s surrounded in just as well as Logan’s metal ones when he’s there to hurry it along. 

He has to carry her out of the building. She’s so exhausted, covered in filth and her own blood even if her new uniform is dark enough to hide most of it. But she’s alive, and the healing took. She buries her nose against the cloth covering Logan’s neck, breathing in the smell of sweat and safety and knows that so long as she stays right here, nothing is ever gonna be able to hurt her again. 

 

* * *

 

Erik glides through the crumbling architecture of the Institute, following the impressions that Charles had pushed into his head. He can hear the song of the building, the metal complaining of a rust it’s received before it’s time. The heavy weight of a concrete it can no longer support. And in the center of it all, a quiet space just big enough for a single person to stand in. 

He finds Wanda in the middle of a room that might have at one time been a classroom. There’s a woman at her feet, unconscious. Erik doesn’t pay her any mind once he’s determined she’s not a threat. 

His daughter looks through him. Wide brown eyes not quite focusing on him correctly. She looks very calm for someone consumed by rage. 

“Daddy,” Wanda says. “Did you come to take me home?”

Erik raises an eyebrow, “I did,” He says, as if he has come from work to pick her up from daycare. As if this is something normal. 

Later he will break down, and cry at what he has lost. What his children have gone through despite everything he has worked for. But right now there is no time to for any of that. 

(She looks so much like her brother. Like Magda.)

“Give me the building,” Erik tells her. 

Wanda puts her hand in his. And just like that, it’s over. 

 

* * *

 

There are news crews. There are always news crews. Mystique has learned to work with them. The trick is making sure they get the narrative that’s useful to her side, instead of any other. Mystique has seen the news helicopters circling since the building started to collapse around them. And she suspects that they might have been tipped off that something was going to happen today. Politics. Whatever. She knows her script. 

She forgets it entirely as soon as she sees the little body cradled in her husband’s arms. 

And this is the image that will be reprinted and retweeted and rerun over and over, in every news outlet, and social media website across the world: 

A mother and father, both proudly, inescapably mutant, cradling their son close in their arms. They wipe away the skin-tone makeup on his face, revealing blue skin, and tear off the bindings of his tail to free it. The boy is unconscious. Maybe dead. And both parents are openly weeping. 

“…Mama?” Kurt whispers. Too quiet to be heard by anyone but the person holding him in their arms. 

“Mama’s here,” Raven says, her voice breaking. In relief, in grief, in every emotion she’s capable of. “She’s right here.” 

Kurt smiles, his eyes closing. “I always knew you would find me.” 

 

* * *

 

_ Peter has a list. He hasn’t told anyone about it, not even Wanda. But Peter has a list of all the things he’s going to do when he gets out of here.  _

_ 1: He’s going to make Wanda smile at something real, that Peter can see, and understand.  _

_ 2: He’s going to find their parents, and learn if they put them in the Institute by choice, or if it was something else.  _

_ 3: Read all the books. Play all the games. Watch all the movies. Listen to all the music. Find out what the internet is like without any parental controls.  _

_ 4: Run around the entire world. Make a friend in every country.  _

_ 5: Eat enough junk food he makes himself sick.  _

_ 6: Never take another pill, or get another injection as long as he lives. _

_ 7: Buy the coolest, flashiest clothes he can get away with. Never take them off.  _

_ 8: Stop dying his hair.  _

_ 9: Go to a real, actual school, just to see what it’s like, even if it’s just for one day.  _

_ And 10: Kiss Kurt Wagner. On the face.  _

 

* * *

 

Peter doesn’t know what to do with… him. 

The ride in the jet had been silent. The silence of exhaustion, of numb shock, of nothing being important enough to break the solemn silence. (Havok had swept off with Scott as soon as he’d seen him, Peter too distracted by Wanda to notice that Kitty and Jubilee had gone with them.)

When they'd arrived the mansion—the mansion—he gave Peter a hug, firm and close, before once more taking Wanda’s hand and pulling her into the house. 

Professor—that’s what everyone called him, everyone except—gave Peter a small, self-effacing smile. “I imagine you have a lot of questions. You’ll find me in the study, when you’re ready to ask them.” 

And then he’d gone inside, the darkness of that entrance hall swallowing him up. 

The thought of going in there, of being trapped again by thick walls and a maze of rooms—Peter’s stomach swoops just thinking about it. 

So he goes for a walk. 

Kurt’s parents… that had been a shock. Peter had gotten used to thinking of him as unique, an aberration, the pinnacle of how far a mutation could stretch the definition of human. But they’d been just as strange and alien as him. Though nowhere near as beautiful. 

His heart burns in his chest at the thought that he might not see him again. But, no. No. He’d seen the significant look the Professor gave the blue woman. They knew each other, in a good way. 

And Peter would find Kurt himself, if he had to. Make sure that he was okay. 

That’s what it is, really. Today… Today was a lot. He woke up a prisoner. And now he’s… what? A son? A student? No one?

…Still a prisoner?

Because. He saw. The—him. He had power. Fucking hell he had power. 

Had he not known where they were? Had he known and just not cared? 

Had he…

(The weight drags him down, stilling his body in a way the pills never could.)

Had he only cared when he felt Wanda’s power?

Because that’s the only thing Peter can see that’s changed. Wanda cheeking her pills, or throwing them up, or, when her power started coming back, sometimes just crumbling them to dust in her hand. Her powers came back, and so did their father. 

 

* * *

 

Charles pulls Erik aside, and explains as best he can, what has happened to his daughters mind. 

Mentally, she’s fifteen, her mind still matches her body. But that capacity isn’t… quite there. 

It’s reconnecting a person’s faulty optic nerve. The musculature and wiring is all there. But the brain hasn’t had access to the visual input everyone else has, and now it’s not only a lot, the brain also has no idea how to process it. 

Wanda has been feeling reality through a fog for a decade. And now it’s in bright, loud, overwhelming technicolour. She didn’t get to process and grow into it as a child, so she has to do that now. 

And she has to learn all this while also growing into herself. When she has access to incredibly destructive forces, when she has the capacity to take in and understand more than she ever could have as a child, and this has a much bigger flow of input. 

He doesn’t tell Erik to treat her delicately, but he gets very close. 

“I can’t get into either of their heads, not for long,” Charles tells him. “Wanda’s brain is… bright is the only word I have for it. Like trying to look into a strobe light, if you do it for too long, all you get is a headache. Peter is just too fast to keep up with. I can get glimpses of emotion, but if I try to go any deeper it all becomes muddled.” 

Erik had nodded, and said something snarky about how Charles would just have to use his mouth to ask questions instead of just finding the answers for himself. He hadn’t meant it, and Charles had pulled him into a hug in an answer to what Erik had really been saying. 

“Oh dear. Be careful with them,” Charles had murmured. “Be very careful indeed.”

And despite what Charles thinks with his constant quiet hum of worry, Erik is being careful. 

It’s obvious that Wanda needs special handling. Even if she weren’t his daughter, he’d see it. There’s an abruptness to her, a—an honest cruelty, he supposes. Blithely open in her actions and speech, not at all caring how it might hurt him to know what they went through, or disturb him that she felt the deaths of every casualty that day. 

So it is a little incautious, what he asks her, but it has been eating at him since the moment he got the two of them safe. 

“Is your mother still alive?”

There is no warning before he is plunged into the memory. 

Everything around him is chaos. Too-bright lights reflected off the water on the road. The light going green, their mother absently flicking from the news to a classical music station. The car comes out of nowhere. T-boning into them in a shrieking wail of tires, breaks, and people. People in combat boots getting out of the back of the other car. The ambulance there too fast, with no sirens to announce it. 

Through Wanda’s eyes, Erik feels himself pulled from the car, screaming for his mom, who is being loaded into a different vehicle than him and Pietro. There is the sharp pin-prick of a needle against her arm. 

And everything going dark… 

When Erik is aware of his body again, he is also aware of Wanda screaming. Hysterical sobs wracking through her body as red mist rises off her in sick waves that warp the air around them. 

Before he can react there’s a blur, and Pietro—No, he’s asked them to call him Peter—is grabbing Wanda up into his arms and whisking her away to god knows what corner of the mansion. 

It’s the first time he’s seen his son in several days. Peter has indicated that he doesn’t want to be near Erik, and Erik has been respecting that wish. 

His wide, accusing eyes had only been levelled at Erik for a second, but they’re burned into his memory regardless. 

It is almost a full week later, before Wanda comes drifting back to Erik’s study. 

They don’t talk about Magda again. 

(And a few days after that, Erik lets the awareness of the stolen change in Peter’s pockets fade back into the background. He still wants his space.)

 

* * *

 

Azazel doesn’t know what to do with this quiet teenager who mutters in German when he’s frustrated. 

Kurt was such a happy child when he was a baby. He got into everything, teleporting more than he walked, and running more than he teleported. His tail had wrapped around Azazel’s fingers, around his mother’s waist, as he chattered about everything and nothing under the sun. 

The Kurt they take back to one of the many Xavier properties that dot the country—this one in sunny California, a holiday home near the beach that’s already well equipped to deal with reporters—is quiet and surly and constantly looks like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Azazel watches Kurt watch him out of the corner of his eyes, unsure why his son refuses to meet his eyes. Kurt rubs at the scars that Azazel put into his cheeks, watching Azazel’s tail flick behind him as he finally concedes to the summer heat and  replaces his suit with something more suitable for the weather. 

Kurt walks around in an oversized, abandoned hoodie that he found in one of the guest rooms. The sleeves dragging down over the tips of his fingers, and hiding his face in shadow. It just pronounces the uncanny glow that occurs when the light hits his eyes. Azazel quite likes the effect, but when he mentions it to Kurt he gets a flat look that he can’t decipher, and a pair of sunglasses the next time he catches Kurt looking at him. 

When Kurt had been a child having a moment of peace was a fond memory, or strictly reserved for naptime. These days, Azazel finds himself missing that endless energy as keenly as he had when he didn’t have his son at all. 

 

* * *

 

“Oh my god you live in a frat house,” Scott says, absolutely delighted. Following behind him are Jubilee and Kitty, looking around the already-overstuffed house with huge eyes. 

“Do not,” Alex shoots back. 

“It stinks in here.” Scott puts his hands all over the furniture, tripping over the bits of detritus strewn across the floor because admittedly Alex, Angel, Darwin, and Sean are not the tidiest of people and never will be. That’s going to have to change until Scott gets his eyes back. If he gets his eyes back. 

_ “It’s not safe for me to be off the meds. Not unless you got a blindfold lying around.”  _

Angel had had a blindfold, which was good because Beast’s findings on the drugs they’d pumped through Scott’s system had been terrifying. Permanent brain damage would have been the least of his problems if he’d kept taking them. 

“..Yeah, it kind of does,” Alex admits. “Come on, you three go upstairs and fight over whatever rooms we got left. Don’t take anything that’s obviously got someone living in it, and bug Sean to get his ass down here and clear up his weird sound equipment. Me and Darwin’ll make this place a little more livable.”

“I will?” Darwin asks.

“You will if you want me to pay for your share of the pizza.”

“Yeah. That’s fair.” 

It takes almost three hours to get the house kind of clean. The kids get under each other’s noses, and Angel begs off to the roof at the earliest opportunity and the vacuum cleaner is probably broken now but hey. Progress. 

And after pizza, Alex and Scott go out to the back garden and ceremoniously burn the reams upon reams of adoption paperwork. No longer needed now that Alex can just pull his brother into a hug, and mess up his hair until Scott screeches at him to stop.

 

* * *

 

Logan eventually stops waiting for the Professor to call, and swings by the mansion a couple weeks after everything. Marie comes too of course (Logan might be feeling a bit protective, as of late.)

It takes him about fifteen minutes in the wide, echoing halls of the mansion to tell the most powerful known mutants in the world that they’re being fucking idiots. 

 

* * *

 

Peter looks Marie up and down. “What are you doing here?”

Marie has a hand clasped around her elbow, arm tight across her stomach. “Logan wanted to come. To see how you guys were doing.” She can’t quite meet his eyes. Why is talking to people so hard?

“Logan?”

Now her eyes snap to him. “Wolverine? The guy who helped me get you guys out?”

Peter looks doubtful. “I didn’t see you there.”

“They took out the generator,” Wanda pipes up. “And then I dropped a building on them.” 

Peter winces. 

“Okay. So why’s he so interested in us?” Peter asks, changing tack. 

Marie shrugs. “I think they’re all old friends.” 

“Oh,” Peter says, instantly souring. 

Marie scowls at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” But Peter’s never been one to hide what he’s feeling if he doesn’t have to. “Don’t you think it’s weird? Are you sure these guys are actually trustworthy?”

She bristles. “Logan saved me. He put himself in danger to give me a better chance of survival.” She glares at him, “Do you want to be back there?”

“Of course not! But I don’t want to be trapped anywhere else either!”

“They’re not going to trap you, they’re like us.”

Peter scoffs. “You can’t trust them just because they’re mutants.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Marie purses her lips. “Just… ask them. Ask them what they’ve been through. You’ll see.” 

Peter turns away from her, scratching at the elbows of his borrowed wool jumper. “Yeah,” he mutters, under his breath, “Talking. Sure. As if he has any interest in talking to me.” 

Marie scrunches up her nose at him. “You’re impossible,” she declares, and decides she’s better off finding Logan. 

It’s not difficult to work out where he is, even with the whole of a mansion to look through. She’s guided straight to him and the two people who live here by the raised voices coming from the ground floor. Marie leans against the wall the door’s on, making sure that she isn’t visible from the room itself. 

“Come on, Chuck, haven’t you read enough fancy psychology books to know that actually talking to the kids might do some good? Or how about giving them their own place in the mansion, instead of just dumping them in a guest room and forgetting about it. And seriously, it’s been weeks. I was able to get Marie some new threads, why is Peter walking around in the stuff you used to wear at Oxford? Hey, I’ve got a great idea.  Take the damn kids shopping. Kill two birds with one stone.”

Marie almost goes into the room to tell them that Peter is worried about what their intentions are. At the last second she decides not to. For one, she’d have to stop eavesdropping. And two… well. She trusts them (mostly), but that doesn’t mean she’s going to just betray Peter’s trust. There will always be a thread connecting those of them raised in the Institute. The X kids. 

She’s sort of the closest thing all of them have to a big sister. And boy, she gets the feeling that they need one. 

“Wanda isn’t stable enough to take outside yet,” A voice sighs in a British accent. 

Logan, “Can’t you mind freeze everyone in a mile radius If she has a freak out?”

“It’s not about hiding—”

“Bullshit.”

“—It’s about protecting lives.” 

“He’s right.” Marie practically hears Logan’s glare being levelled at the other man. “Charles. I can fly. You can alter memories, or prevent people from perceiving things in the first place. They’ve been caged far too long.”

“And while you’re at it, get the other kids up here too.” Logan grumbles, “Bet they’ve all missed each other.” 

“I’ll contact them,” Charles says, rueful. “You’re right, Logan. Of course you are.” 

“Damn straight,” And then he raises his voice, “You planning to come in Marie, or just stand there all day?”

Busted. 

Marie finds that she doesn’t really mind. 

 

* * *

 

It’s not Wanda who has a problem with the mall. 

Wanda had felt the mental impressions of everyone in the facility. The other children, the teachers, the doctors, the cleaners, the few adults who bothered to visit their kids. 

Peter has spent every day since he was five seeing a maximum of 20 people, if he was lucky. Most days the number didn’t get higher than 10. 

The mall is a lot. They go on a weekday, early. With  _ Him _ driving. Wanda and Peter in the backseat, the passenger seat at the front empty because Charles decided not to come at the last minute. 

Marie and Logan are meeting them at the mall, the two of them hitching a ride on Logan’s motorbike. 

_ He  _ had explained that the objective is to get clothes for him and Wanda, and things to do that isn’t play monopoly. 

Peter is so sick of monopoly. Wanda always takes the stations and builds an empire of hotels around the rest of the board. And she cheats when he rolls the dice.

He doesn’t know that there's going to be a problem. How could he? Peter’s the normal one. 

But when they walk into the store, Peter’s the one overwhelmed by the sheer choice. Different colours, different styles, everything clashing together. Clothes on display, adverts for books and video games and people there are so many people there are so many smells and noises and—

He thinks his head is going to split open. 

He’ll get used to it. He just, needs to get used to it. 

He trails Logan and Marie. Looking at Wanda to see if she’s having the same problem, but Wanda looks as put together as she usually does. No clues there either way. 

He lasts about 30 minutes. 

Peter’s not actually sure what happened. One minute he’d been looking at a record player, listening to a tune that Marie had dismissed as overly hipster. The next someone had brushed past him, knocking him into the display and then… 

He’d just sort of collapsed inward. Crumpled like a house of cards. Knees bending, arms folding around his head and rocking back and forth as internally he’d screamed at himself to calm the fuck down and to stop acting like a crazy person. 

It hadn’t worked. 

 

* * *

 

Peter goes down, and Erik’s heart stops. 

He’d been giving him distance. As much distance as he’d felt capable of in public like this. Anyone could be here. Anyone could try to take his children from him. 

So, perhaps it was less space than Peter would have liked. But Erik would regret even that much, when he turned back, not wanting Peter out of his sight for long, only to find him gone. 

Wanda looked to him, picking up on his spike of fear. (He had quickly learned the prickly feel of his daughter’s mind, a subtle predation that raised the hair on the back of his neck.) 

He strode quickly to where he’d last seen him, fighting the worry he’d had ever since he’d seen just how quickly Peter could move. The worry that his son would just run and never come back. 

But when he rounds the aisle, rows and rows of shoes nestled neatly in boxes, Peter is still there. On the floor, folded in on himself and in obvious pain, but still there. 

“Logan!” That’s all the warning any of them get before Magneto is pulling Wanda—and by extension, Marie—to him, metal shelves sweeping them forward none too gently to the shoe area, then forming up in a barricade around them. He kneels next to Peter, voice urgent, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Peter flinches away from him, but not before Magneto feels the tremble under his fingers. 

“No.” His eyes are wild, wide, when he’s not forcefully squeezing them shut. “Too much, too much.” The words are said so fast, it takes Magneto a moment to work them out. 

A moment too long, it turns out. 

Red fog spills out in a spiral, hurricane in miniature, sparks of lightning lighting up the haze. 

Magneto turns, too late, to see the hard look on his daughter’s face, concentration and venom as she twists her fingers to re-shape the nature of reality. 

“Shit.” The low, gruff voice of Wolverine, before three claws open a hole in Erik’s barricade. He pokes his head through, gives Erik a look that feels strangely parental in it’s accusing disappointment, before he says, “Take her out, kid.”

Another panic seizing in Magneto’s chest. Wolverine is ripped forward, through the hole, before it closes behind him and he’s slammed against the metal wall, spread eagle, teeth gritted in the pain of having his very bones twisted by Magneto’s power. 

“Erik,” and he manages an astounding amount of patience when being essentially crucified, “She’s got even less restraint than you. We’re not going to hurt her, we’re just putting a stopper on those powers until everyone calms down.” 

We. Magneto spins, too late. The other girl has her gloves off already, one hand on Wanda’s wrist, who seems more fascinated than anything as the scarlet fog swirls and spirals back into her. She makes no move to pull away or stop her, all the way until her eyes roll up and she collapses. 

Magneto hurls a rack at Rogue, transformed into a spear of metal on the fly. Her eyes widen, and she moves to throw herself out of the way: too slow. But it doesn’t matter; the projectile seems to pass a threshold and ripples, and when it strikes Rogue, it explodes into dust.

“Woah.” Her eyes, glowing red, still register surprise. 

Magneto picks another shield to hurl at her, and another, and another. As quick as he does, though, each object falls apart, or transforms, or deviates wildly from it’s path. 

“Erik.” His attention’s slipped again. Sloppy. He spins back to Wolverine, hand already out to fling him away but—

“I am not threatening him,” Wolverine says, and takes a deliberate step away from Peter, though he still hovers close. 

Peter has a blanket on him now. More than one, haphazard, like they’d been thrown and landed where they might. But his hands are clutching the edges, holding them tight. He’s still rocking back and forth, but it’s slower, less frantic. 

Wolverine—Logan—reaches out and very deliberately pulls a bit of blanket forward, covering Peter’s head like a cowl. 

“I think we should take them home.”

Erik looks around. 

At Marie, hands dripping red-white energy, eying him warily. At the twisted metal remains of their fight. At the small, huddled figure of his son, who he had done absolutely nothing to help, jumping straight into divisive violence. At the steadily breathing unconscious form of his daughter, who might, he realizes, be even quicker to the draw than him, and more dangerous with it. 

“Yes.” His voice is faint in the dust hanging in the air, an eerie and unnatural silence. “That… Yes. Home.” 

 

* * *

 

Peter thinks he might have to revise his plan. 

He stares out the car window, Wanda’s body slumped against his. He hugs her closer, reassured by her solid weight against his side. 

He’d always had an image of how his life would be outside the facility. It had changed a few times over the years, things added and discarded as Peter had grown up and grown bitter. But in all of them he’d cast himself as Wanda’s caretaker. Her interface between the chaos that is the world and herself. 

There’s no way he can do that if he can’t get out of the house without turning into a nervous wreck. 

No more running around the world and seeing every culture possible. No more going to school like a normal teenager. No more anything. 

And then there’s his dad… his dad who’s first reaction had been to create a cage of metal around them. Like he was afraid Peter was going to run away. And it’s so, so close to what the Institute did that it makes something horrible and cloying settle in his stomach and makes him hyper aware of the fact that he’s sitting in a teeny tiny metal box with a man who is terrifying and terrifyingly powerful and doesn’t even really like Peter and… Oh. Okay yeah. 

“Stop the car,” Peter croaks, “’m gonna be sick.”

 

* * *

 

Erik watches his son heaving in the side of the road as cars move past in rushes of displaced air, and wonders when exactly he forgot how to do this. 

Pietro—Peter’s—hair isn’t long enough to need holding back, having only had time to grow only a little shaggy from the short, military style cut he’d started with. But Erik wants to do something for him, so he waits until Peter’s caught his breath, wet and gasping, blinking at the gross mush across his face, and hands him Erik’s sweater. 

“Here. You can use this.” 

Peter wipes at his face, making several passes. Coughs, deliberate, spits, then finally straightens. 

“Does it happen often?” Have you been having these attacks all along, where I can’t see?

Peter’s expression is blank. “Motion sickness?”

Erik’s brow furrows. “That’s not what that was.”

Peter blinks, expression shifting like water to an easy smile, “I dunno. Last time I was in a car I think I went up to your knees.”

“Peter…” Erik doesn’t know how to have the conversation from this side. It’s usually Charles saying these lines. “I know that, the things that happen in a place like that, don’t go away just because you’ve left.” Even when you’ve left it a pile of rubble. “There’s no shame in it.”

“Yeah. I know.” His eyes dart to Wanda sitting in the car. “Look, I’m fine. Really. Can we just go home?” 

Erik watches as Peter visibly has to steel himself before he gets back to the car, and guilt settles heavily in his gut. 

The rest of the drive is made in uneasy silence. And when they pull up to the mansion, Erik comes around to the side to—Wait. That’s not the side Wanda is on. 

Erik opens the door on Peter’s side, holding it open for him, expectant. 

Peter gives him an odd little smile, hauling Wanda up in his arms. There’s a mutter about taking her up to her room, before the two of them turn into a blur of motion fast enough for Erik to hear a pop of displaced air. 

Erik tracks Peter moving through the mansion by the buttons and zippers on his clothes. And he thinks, belatedly, that giving the boy space may not have been the best thing to do. 

 

* * *

 

Peter, for his part, wishes that he actually remembered his life before the X Institute as anything more than blurs and a language he can’t understand anymore. It’s easier to trust someone when you can remember then tying your shoelaces or washing your hair. Not for the first time, he’s violently jealous that Wanda remembers everything.

He zips through the mansion, reaching that jittery, must do something before he explodes feeling that he remembers from before the meds. When he just wasn’t allowed to run. Or fiddle. Or fidget. Or do anything really. 

He can feel himself rocking back and forth and he knows he should stop because only crazy people rock on their heels all the time but it makes him feel better and he’s not sure he can stop even if he tried to. 

The room he’s picked to camp out in is one of those random rooms in the mansion that looks like it hasn’t been used in forever and was built just to exist. Or maybe this one was built for the purpose of showing off the weird mural and taxidermied animals in it. Too soon for Peter’s liking, there’s a knock on the door. 

“…Yeah?”

“Can I come in.” Him. Dad. Erik. Whatever. Peter hasn’t worked out what he should be calling him yet. He’s not really ready for this conversation but that hadn’t really been a question.

“Um. It’s your house,” Peter points out. “Go ahead.” The doors not even closed properly. Heavy wood left slightly ajar. Closed doors are the enemy, even with super speed. 

Erik comes into the room. All grave faced and serious, looking at Peter with that weird light in his eyes that Peter just does not understand. 

“We need to talk,” Erik says. Peter wonders how much trouble he’s in this time. And how much the punishment is going to hurt. 

 

* * *

 

Erik takes a moment to gather his thoughts, before he says, “What happened in the mall today—”

Peter cuts him off, “Yeah. Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.”

Erik blinks, taken aback. He evaluates this strange young man that’s replaced the little boy he used to know. This young man who won’t look him in the eye, who fidgets with the loose change in his pockets. He looks for all the world like a young soldier at attention if it weren’t for the way he rocks back and forth on his heels…

Charles had warned Erik to not treat them like war children. The weapons of destruction that Erik and his generation had been turned into. 

Looking at his son, Erik has a sinking feeling that he’s failed Peter, and done exactly that. 

“You’re not in trouble,” he says, finally. 

Peter’s smile just becomes even more brittle. “Okay. Still isn’t happening again.” 

“What did happen?”

Peter just shrugs. 

He can feel the impatience building. Erik hates being lied to. He especially hates it when there’s no reason to do it. He doesn’t understand why Peter sees him as the enemy. 

“Cut the bullshit, already. Tell me what happened.” He snaps, regretting that too for the way it makes Peter flinch. 

“Or what?” Peter challenges. Maybe if he didn’t look so much like his mother, Erik would miss the flash of hurt that flickers across his face. “You’ll kick me out?”

“What?”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Peter says, voice tripping into double time. “You don’t really want me. I’m just extra. I’m not the one with the crazy powerful, world altering superpower. Not like Wanda. All I can do it run a little bit faster than everyone else. That’s nothing compared to her. Compared to you! Man, I don’t belong here, I don’t even remember you properly. All I had going for me is that I’m normal. But I’m not even that anymore. I’m not. I’m really not, I’m going crazy an—”

His voice quickly turns into an unintelligible mass of sound. Erik’s already heard enough. He strides across the room in four long steps, and hugs Peter fiercely to his chest. 

Peter stops talking. He goes completely still in Erik’s arms. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Erik says, his forehead pressed to the top of Peter’s head. Silver hair bristling against his skin. “Understand? I am never going to throw you away, no matter what you do. No matter what you are. You’re my son.”

There’s a long silence afterward. Filled only with the sound of Peter’s shaky breathing against Erik’s chest. It stretches out, until Erik wonders once again if he’s ruined this. If all he’s done is drive the wedge between them even further. Then Peter makes a muffled sob into Erik’s shirt buttons, throwing his arms around Erik’s middle to cling to him as the sob turns into loud, heartbroken crying. 

Erik holds Peter close, rocking them both slightly as he murmurs in Yiddish and German that Peter is safe. That Erik loves him. 

Slowly, Peter’s tight hold around him slackens, tensed muscles giving way. But he doesn’t move away. He stays in Erik’s hold, leaning against him. After a second of debate, Erik shifts, and lifts Peter up until his legs are wrapped around Erik’s waist. He marvels a little, at how heavy Peter’s gotten since the last time he was able to do this. 

It’s a short trek (thankfully) to Peter’s bedroom. Erik arranges them on top of the covers so Peter is lying against his chest, when Peter refuses to let go of him properly. He smooths his hand over the short bristles of Peter’s hair, down the slightly scratchy jumper that once belonged to Charles. 

“We really do need to talk,” Erik says. 

Peter shakes his head. 

There’s a smile on Erik’s lips. He remembers this, from both his children. “No? You don’t want to talk?”

A slow nod. 

Erik shakes his head, he had wished that his children would grow out of this stage by now, hadn’t he. If he were Charles he would go into Peter’s head and read what he needed from the surface thoughts and whatever memories Peter decided to share with him. 

But alas, all Erik can do it make metal defy the natural laws of physics. 

“How about this then,” Erik says, “I’ll talk, and you can decide if you want to add anything when I’m done.”

Peter, eventually, gives another slow nod. 

It takes another moment for Erik to find the words. But slow, and soft, like some fucked up bedtime story, Erik explains how he grew up. And how he understands, more than Peter might think, what he’s going through. He tells Peter that all he wants is for Peter to be here. To be his son. To grow up happy, the way Erik could not. 

And he apologises for not finding them sooner. For taking a fucking decade to even realise that there was anything to find in the first place. At Peter’s questioning sound, Erik realises that no one had bothered to tell Peter how they had found the X Institute in the first place. That’s one problem with living with a telepath; Erik’s forgotten that most people don’t just know what he doesn’t say. 

“Of course we can always find you somewhere else for you to live, if that’s what you want,” Erik says, heart breaking as he does. “For you and Wanda, together or separately. I know that Charles and I—”

“I want to stay,” Peter says. Voice rough from crying. Erik should have brought him a glass of water. “I don’t wanna go. Don’t make me go.”

“I won’t.” A pause. Another realisation. “What do you want, Peter?”

He feels Peter’s smile against his chest. “Make Wanda laugh at something I understand. Learn who you are. Read all the books. Watch all the TV. Play all the games. Listen to all the music. Go to school like a normal kid, even if it’s just for the day. Run around the whole world. Make a friend in every country. Eat enough junk food I get sick. Buy the coolest  jacket I can find. Grow out my hair, and stop dying it. Never take another pill or injection ever again. And…”

“And?” Erik prompts, but Peter just grins and shakes his head. 

“I’m really tired now,” He says. 

“You’ve had a long day. Better sleep.” Erik carefully extricates himself from Peter’s arms. By the time he’s left the room, he can hear the deep breaths of someone already half asleep, and shakes his head. A long day indeed. 

As he leaves, he looks at Peter’s room with fresh eyes. It’s impersonal, just one of several guest rooms in the mansion. Old, worn furniture that’s been in the Xavier family for generations, no doubt. Nothing that belongs to Peter himself. Nothing that Peter had even chosen to go in his room. 

And Erik thinks, that of course he’d been worried Peter would run. Erik hadn’t given him any reason to stay. 

 

* * *

 

“You don’t understand, you’re beautiful!” Kurt yells at his parents. His voice shatters the tense air that’s been growing like thick black mould around the three of them. 

“Kurt—” Raven starts, reaching out to him. 

Kurt ducks under her arm, grabbing at the makeup strewn across the kitchen table. The makeup that he has so carefully accumulated and hidden so that his parents cannot just throw it away while he was not looking this time. The makeup that someone has taken from his room and confronted him with, talking nonsense about how he looked fine. He didn’t need to hide his true, natural form. Mutant and Proud. 

He does not look fine. He looks like a monster, and an ugly one to boot. 

But the great Mystique who has done modeling shoots in her natural blue skin, and Azazel who acts like he just rolls out of bed and naturally looks like that, seem to disagree. At the very least they seem to be insistent that Kurt embarrass himself by going outside with nothing to hide how very unnatural he is. 

Kurt is so very sick of hearing the words Mutant and Proud. 

The door to his bedroom makes a very satisfying bang as it slams shut. 

He’s still seething as he re-hides the makeup, this time in the set of polished leather shoes that are languishing in the closet because even Kurt had to admit that they would never fit his misshapen feet. Perhaps this time they won’t be found. 

It’s anger that makes his vision blurry. Anger that curls his tail close around his feet, and his breath come out in shuddering gasps. 

“They should understand. Why don’t they understand?” A mutter, thick with unshed tears. Angry tears. Because the only emotion inside Kurt’s chest right now is anger. “Can’t they see that I’m disgusting? That perhaps I am doing the world a favour by making myself look at least a little more presentable? My feet are wrong. My hands are wrong. Everything about me is wrong.” 

For a moment, Kurt considers grabbing his phone, and calling someone. Scott maybe. Or Peter. But he can’t actually imagine talking to them about this. It feels so petty when he tries to put it into words. 

Oh, my parents don’t understand me. How horrible. At least he gets to have parents at all. That’s more than what Kitty, Jubilee and Scott can say. Scott’s parents are dead, and Jubilee’s and Kitty’s don’t want their children if their powers can’t be taken out of them. 

Compared to his friends, Kurt’s grievances are nothing. 

 

* * *

 

“He’s definitely your son,” Azazel says. 

Raven turns away from Kurt’s bedroom door. “As if your temper isn’t just as bad.” She snaps. 

Raven turns away when Azazel comes up behind her and tries to hug her. She storms around the kitchen, fishing one of the endless bottles of red wine from one of the cabinets. Medicating with alcohol, thy name is Xavier. 

A healthy measure of it is chugged, before Raven fills up her glass again and lets it sit on the counter. 

Azazel nudges his own glass into Raven’s view, nonverbally asking because he knows she’ll just snap at him if he says anything. She fills it up too, though not as high as her own. Azazel didn’t grow up with Charles Xavier. As a result his alcohol tolerance is barely anything. 

After a sip from the second glass of wine, Raven asks, “Do you think it’s me?” 

Azazel looks at her over the rim of his wine glass. “What makes it more likely to be you, instead of me?”

“I don’t know. Because I’m the shape-shifter. If either of us should know about having self-esteem issues from how we look, it’s me isn’t it? But I don’t understand him. I’ve spent enough of my life bending to the expectations of everyone around me. Shouldn’t he be happy that he doesn’t have to pretend to be something he’s not anymore?”

Azazel shrugs. 

“You’re so helpful.” 

“When I was growing up, I hid in the shadows and people called me demon. I grew to like it, and stopped bothering to hide at all. If they were going to be afraid either way, why should I bend over backwards to make myself more palatable? I like the way I look.” 

Raven sighs. She feels Azazel’s tail wrap itself loosely around her waist. 

“It will get better,” he says, “give it time.” 

“I don’t want to give it time.” Raven says, feeling small and childish as she does, but if she can’t be small and childish around Azazel, who can she be small and childish around? 

“I know.” 

Raven takes another sip of wine. “I want my baby.” 

“I know.” 

“Does that make me a bad mom?”

“No, of course not.” 

Raven turns her face up to meet Azazel’s eyes. “It does.” 

“You want the boy you would have had if humans had not destroyed his spirit and is breaking under the strain of trying to be something that he is not. What mother wouldn’t want their son to be undamaged and happy?”

It’s an effort to keep eye contact. 

Azazel’s thumb comes up to rest on Raven’s cheek. She leans gratefully into the touch, feeling the careful press of Azazel’s sharp claws against her skin. 

“What are we going to do?” Raven asks. 

Azazel is quiet. Neither of them are good at asking for help, both of them too fiercely independent to think of it except as a last resort. But Raven can see the shape of it in the silence between them. They had Kurt so young… She wonders if they would have reached this same impasse if they hadn’t lost Kurt to humans. Or if she would have been able to make him proud of the way he looked if she had just been there to show him how wonderful he is. 

It doesn’t matter. Not really. But Raven has always tortured herself with what ifs and what could bes far after there’s any chance to actually change anything. 

She takes another sip of wine before she admits that the two of them are swiftly reaching that last resort. 

“Maybe… We should make sure that place didn’t fuck with him in other ways we can’t see,” She says, meaning, I don’t know what to do, but maybe Charles does. 

Azazel hums, “He doesn’t walk properly,” he admits, “Too used to not having a tail to rely on. I don’t know if it’s damaging him in other ways.” 

“Hank is at Westchester these days.” The thought of going back to the mansion isn’t a pleasant one, but Raven’s faced these demons before. She knows how to deal with them. 

Azazel gives her a searching look, before he nods. 

“I’ll tell Kurt,” Azazel says. He brushes his thumb against Raven’s cheek one last time, “his friends are all there too aren’t they? He’ll be glad to see them.”

“I’ll tell Charles to expect visitors.” 

“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see you.” 

“And you,” Raven says, just to make Azazel throw back his head in a laugh. 

 

* * *

 

Wanda skates her fingers over Marie’s open palm, watching as the red mist travels down from her fingertips, spiraling down to sink into the lines in Marie’s skin. A second later, Marie snaps her fingers, and the same red energy fires itself off as a bolt of energy into the makeshift target on the other side of the courtyard.

No one else is around.Playing with Marie’s ability is so much easier when there aren’t worried eyes and sounds every time Wanda splits another bit of her power off to feet to Marie. 

“You’re sure you’re not dizzy? Or tired? I don’t want you to faint because I’ve taken too much” Marie asks. 

Except for Marie herself apparently. 

Wanda shakes her head. “I know where the limit is,” She says. She makes her eyes big, bottom lip sticking out in an exaggerated pout, “Play with me.” 

“I’m playing,” Marie laughs. “What did you have in mind?”

“Do you think we could make that tree grow apples?” Wanda asks, gesturing. 

Marie takes a long look at it. “It’s an oak tree. And it’s spring.” 

“That’s not no.” 

“You’re really crazy aren’t you?” Marie says with a laugh. 

“Absolutely insane,” Wanda agrees. She stands up, brushing grass off her new red skirt. “Come on! Before Dad comes down and makes the face.” 

There’s another giggle from Marie, but she picks herself off the ground with the help of Wanda’s hand. “Alright. Apples here we go.” 

She presses her hand lightly to Wanda’s, and together the two of them manipulate the red mist, the lines of probability and chaos to do things that Wanda had once only been able to dream of. 

They have apple pie for dessert. Slightly burned, and the pastry is a little too flaky, because Wanda beat it for too long, and was lost in her head when the timer went off. 

Charles declares it to be the best thing he’s eaten in years. 

 

* * *

 

Scott destroys Charles’s favourite tree on the grounds. 

Hank takes a long look at the smoking remains. “You know I think I can fix that.” 

 

* * *

 

Kitty keeps falling through her bed in the middle of the night. 

Hank thinks about the relationship between molecules, and energy, and the research notes he found on her bracelets. “I think I can make something that will help with that.” 

 

* * *

 

It turns out Peter gets friction burns from his clothes when he runs at full speed. 

Under Erik’s glare, Hank shakes his head and says, “I’ll come up with something to stop that.” 

 

* * *

 

Kurt is late to his check up with Hank by a good half an hour. Long enough that Hank’s meds have stopped working, and he’s back to being blue and furry under his lab coat. He doesn’t mind. Hank’s waited longer for people to come visit him before, both when he worked in the CIA, and afterwards when he became the go-to physician for what feels like half of mutant America. 

Hank’s sure that he’s waited days for Charles before. 

He hears Kurt before he sees him. An angry voice that hasn’t gone through the rigors of puberty yet, echoing down the concrete tunnels of the bunker underneath the mansion. “If you had not hidden my makeup we would not have been late.” 

It’s swiftly followed by Raven’s voice, “Honey, you know that Hank’s just going to tell you to take it off during the check up.” She sounds tired. 

Hank busies himself with his equipment, trying not to listen to the argument outside his door. It’s hard not to though, when they’re so close, and the bunker’s acoustics have a tendency to amplify all sound. 

“I didn’t put it on for the doctor.” 

“Then who did you put it on for?” 

The door to the lab swings open. Hank wheels around, taking in the sight of Raven in her usual figure-hugging ensemble of leggings and brightly coloured tank-top, Completely at visual odds with the boy she’s holding onto the shoulder of. It’s difficult to tell what Kurt looks like under the dark hood he’s pulled over his head, and the shapeless, baggy clothes hiding the rest of him from view. His eyes—exactly like his Mom’s—are wide in shock. 

“You’re blue.” Kurt says. 

“That’s right.” Hank nods, sticking out his hand. “I’m Hank McCoy. Beast on the network.” 

Kurt takes it, with some trepidation. Hank feels the whisper of three thick fingers under the handful of hoodie fabric. “Kurt Wagner. Or Nightcrawler.” 

“And how are you today, Kurt?” 

“I am okay,” Kurt says. Hank doesn’t miss the glare he sends backwards to Raven, as he steps more into the room. “Can we do this fast? I’m not a fan of being prodded.” 

“Fast as I can,” Hank promises. He meets Raven’s tired gaze over Kurt’s head, thinking that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Raven rolls her eyes. 

“I’ll leave the two of you to it,” She says, with a wave. “I have a date with my brother and a lot of paperwork.” 

Hank knows for a fact that’s a lie. And judging by Kurt’s stormy expression, he doesn’t buy it either. Ah well. This will be easier without a concerned parent hovering over his shoulder. Trial by Erik had been an… experience, to say the least. 

“So,” Hank says, once the door to the lab is closed, and he’s got Kurt up on the examining table. “You’ve had check ups before right? You know the routine.” 

Kurt gets his sarcastic nod from his Mom too. 

The check up goes swiftly, if a bit awkwardly. Kurt’s blood pressure is fine, as is his heartbeat, eyes, ears, and reflexes. Hank’s in the middle of testing the grip strength of Kurt’s tail, when the boy says, “Well go on.”

“Hmm?” Not as high as it should be if the models he’d got from Azazel are right. Hank will have to work out appropriate strengthening exercises. 

“I know the real reason I’m here. You’re meant to tell me that what I’m doing to myself is harmful, and that I should be proud of having blue skin. I shouldn’t be hiding under makeup.” 

That pulls Hank out of his science-induced stupor. He looks up at Kurt. From this angle he can see under the shadow of the hood, see the pale-peach face that doesn’t sit quite right. Because the paint’s covering fur, Hank realises as Kurt shifts uncomfortably, even as he continues to meet Hank’s curious gaze with his own glower. 

“Do you want me to say that?” Hank asks. 

Kurt’s hands twist together under his hoodie sleeves. “No,” He admits, “but you’re going to anyway.” 

“And why is that?”

Raven, what did you do? Hank wonders. 

“Because you’re blue! You’re a mutant and you’re blue and a doctor, and friends with my parents! You’re going to tell me mutant and proud and that will be the end of it.” 

“I’m only blue when I feel safe.” Hank says, “Most of the time I’m a white man who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Institute we rescued you from.” 

Kurt’s eyes narrow. “I don’t believe you.” 

“Oh it’s true.” Hank fumbles for his phone, “I’ve got a picture here, to prove it. There. This was last Christmas. I’m the tall one Alex is making bunny ears behind.” 

Kurt takes the phone with careful hands. His eyes flick between the screen, and Hank’s face. The intense study makes the hairs on the back of Hank’s neck raise. He’s never been comfortable with people looking at him, even when he isn’t blue and hairy. 

Eventually, Kurt asks, “Are you a shapeshifter?”

“No, not really. I have medicine that makes me look human but it wears off. If you’d arrived when you were supposed to, I would have looked like that when you got to the lab.” 

A dawning realisation, “You hide too.” 

“I suppose.” 

“You do! You don’t let people see you when you’re blue! Can you hide me too? Can I take the medicine too?”

“Well…” No. No, Raven would kill him even if it was possible. “The medicine is locked to my DNA. It won’t work for anyone else.”

Kurt’s face falls. “Oh.” 

Crap. 

“But maybe I can help some other way!” Hank tacks on hastily, “I know what it’s like to not want people to stare at you all the time. What would make you most comfortable?”

Kurt blinks. “No one’s ever asked me that before,” He says. “I… I suppose I want something that will make me look… right.”

“Human?”

“Yes. A face that no one will stare at and think, wrong, or monster.” He shifts a little, “Something that is easy and quick to apply and can deal with fur and scars. That won’t come off when I rub at my face, or if I get suddenly wet. Or if I have to look blue, at least I would like to be a blue that isn’t in patches because my fur is growing back all funny. And I would like something that hides my hands, and shoes that fit my feet without hurting but without looking strange. I can hide my tail under my shirt if I wrap it around my stomach—”

“It’s better if you don’t do that anymore,” Hank interrupts. I’m not sure it’s good for your spine to be forced into that shape all the time. The rest of it though, I might actually have something there.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” Hank says.

There’s a pause, “And you’re really not going to tell me that it’s wrong? To want something to cover myself?”

Hank looks at him, and says as reassuring as he can, “Hey. If this is what will make you comfortable with yourself, then that’s a good thing. All I want to do is help you. If I can make sure that you’re comfortable and also as safe as you can be then… That’s my job.

”Kurt is looking at him with large eyes. He looks so very fragile under Hank’s gaze; his elbows held tight to his body, head shaking just a little, as he leans in towards Hank. He doesn’t deserve it, not really. Hank’s just saying what he wishes someone had said to him when he was fourteen, and his feet started to grow into something that no normal person would be expected to deal with. 

“I would really like that,” Kurt says. “Please.”

Hank can’t say no to that face. “I want to start with your feet if that’s okay. I know it doesn’t seem the biggest issue, but I don’t like you risking tetanus by walking around without anything protecting the soles of your feet. Lucky for you, you’re not the only mutant with differing podiatry. I bet one of my prototypes for my own trainers will fit you just fine…”

 

* * *

 

Hank holds his hands up, fingers spread. “Before you kill me, look outside,” he says. 

Raven curls her lip at him, fury held rightly in the lift of her chin, and steely eyes. “You weren’t meant to make it worse!” she hisses. 

“Just, look outside,” Hank urges. “If you don’t like what you see, feel free to kill me, but I really think you should withhold judgement for just a bit longer.”

“What could I possibly see that would change my mind?” Raven says, but she must still love him a little, because she doesn’t hit him in the face. Instead she walks past him to look through the window that overlooks the grounds. There were plans once to turn that section into a basketball court, but at the moment it’s nothing more than a large lawn that’s been left to grow just a little bit more wild than it appropriate. 

Raven’s hand goes up to cover her face. “Oh. Oh, he’s smiling,” She says, and Hank can tell that she’s trying desperately not to cry. “I’d forgotten what that looked like.” 

 

* * *

 

Even with the nano-carbon veil that makes up Kurt’s new face, he still finds himself nervous as he steps out onto the field where he can see the distant forms of his friends lounging in the sunlight. 

After a debate with Hank, he’d decided that it would be better to be blue after all for the first time that he saw them. Even if it was a fake kind of blue that evened out the patches of fur across his nose and neck. In a few months, he would look like this for real, Hank had said. Kurt hadn’t believed him, but it was a nice thing to say. Looking like a human would be reserved for people who didn’t already know how freakish Kurt really was. 

He wonders what his friends will say. He wonders if they will still be his friends after this. 

None of them have actually seen what he looks like. The Institute didn’t let Kurt out of his room unless he was wearing makeup to make himself look like a normal boy. Sure, he has touched Scott to guide him around a room, and he has curled his tail around Peter’s ankles when he was being particularly silly, but he has never shown them exactly how different he is. 

Kurt searches for the familiar-unfamiliar sight of Peter’s silver head, stomach swooping. They’d all been sent a picture of Peter’s grinning face, hair falling around his ears in silver waves. The last of the dye had finally left his head, and Peter had to show all of them the result as soon as possible. Kurt had saved the picture, feeling weirdly guilty about it at the time, but hadn’t been able to help himself. Peter had just looked so happy, caught in a laugh, blue eyes glittering with his smile. 

Out of all his friends, Peter is the one that Kurt is most eager, and most worried, to see. 

He knows that Peter likes him. Kurt has eyes. He has caught Peter staring at him enough times for that penny to have dropped. 

In the Institute, that kind of thing was dangerous. Kurt had made sure never to acknowledge that he noticed the staring, or the way Peter sat just a little too close too often for it to be a coincidence. If the doctors had noticed… Well. They all knew the consequences of not fitting into the boxes they were meant to. 

He’s not in the Institute anymore…

Neither is Peter and surely he’s found better boys to stare at with dark, appreciative eyes than Kurt. 

In the end, Wanda is the one who notices him first. She’s sitting high in the branches of what looks like an ancient maple tree, her mass of curly hair tied up behind her in a wild pony tail and a red dress. She looks like the witch of the wilds that Kurt had always imagined her as when they were younger. 

He’s too far away to see her expression. Kurt knows he could just teleport and be below that tree with the rest of his friends in a heartbeat, but he can’t bring himself to do it just yet. Wanda ducks down, speaking to the knot of teenagers sitting below her branches. 

Kurt hears the yell, and in one blink and the next, he sees Peter stand, and the next he’s being tossed around in a giant bear hug. 

“You’re here!” Kurt can make out through the rest of Peter’s fast-paced babble. “Oh man, I thought when I saw your dad in the halls it was a dream or something? Or maybe you were still in California and it was important adult business? Why didn’t you mention that you were gonna be here soon?”

“Surprise?” Kurt says. 

He’s set down on the grounds, Peter’s hands still clinging to his shoulders. His blue eyes so very bright. They dart over Kurt’s face, and Peter leans back slightly to take in the rest of him. 

Unlike the other times Kurt has been scrutinized, this doesn’t feel like a violation. He doesn’t know what this is. 

“Wow.” Peter breathes. 

Kurt feels like he’s been electrocuted. Every cell in his body vibrating as his heartbeat pounds in his ears. 

“Hello Peter.” Kurt says. 

“Hi.” Peter blinks, too rapid. “Hi, I—Wow. This is what you look like under all that stuff?” 

Kurt shrugs, “More or less.” 

Peter’s hands are trembling against Kurt’s shoulders. 

“You’re amazing,” Peter says. “I always used to wonder what you really looked like and… It was not like this. I don’t think I could have imagined this. I cannot believe that those bastards at the Institute hid this.” 

Kurt’s skin crawls. The lie sticking in his throat. He has to duck his head then, and admit, “This isn’t really my face.” He closes his eyes, pulling off the mesh that makes up the veil, balling up the nano-carbon mesh in his hands. 

He doesn’t open his eyes. 

Kurt wants to keep the memory of that appreciation and wonder nakedly painted over Peter’s face, instead of acknowledging the revulsion he would see now. 

Peter’s hand is cool against his cheek. A calloused palm against Kurt’s scars, and patchy fur. 

“Kurt,” Peter says, voice strange. “You’re so fucking beautiful.” 

Kurt laughs, because it is that or sob. “You don’t have to be kind to me.” 

“That is so not what this is about.” Peter’s hand tilts Kurt’s face up, “Look at me? Please? Open your eyes.” 

Kurt swallows. “I don’t want to see.” 

“Please,” Peter says, quiet and longing, and Kurt thinks, Oh. 

He opens his eyes. 

“I really missed you,” Peter says, but Kurt is not paying much attention to what Peter is saying anymore. He’s too caught on the naked want in Peter’s eyes. His gaze is dark, pupils large, swallowing up the blue, leaving the blush staining Peter’s cheeks to be the only colour left on his face. Peter’s tongue darts out, wetting his lips.

Kurt feels almost feverish as he leans into Peter’s touch on his cheek. It is an afterthought, an instinct, that pushes him up onto the tips of his toes, and press a kiss to Peter’s mouth. 

He feels Peter’s low groan all the way through his body. The soft press becoming insistent as Peter closes his eyes. The clutch of his fingers against the fabric of Kurt’s hoodie desperate. Kurt’s knees are weak, his stomach full of butterflies. He feels like this moment could last forever. 

“Peter, stop hogging Kurt!” Kitty yells. 

The two of them break apart, breathless and laughing. Kurt leans against Peter’s chest, shoulders shaking. He is so happy. 

“Guess I’m not the only one who missed you,” Peter says. 

“Guess not.” Kurt says. “Let me…” He holds up the bundle of nano-carbon. “I don’t want them to see.” 

“Okay,” Peter says. Like that’s it, the end of the conversation, and Kurt feels very delicate and breakable against him. “Hold your horses!” He yells back at the group, “You can all get a piece soon!” 

“I don’t think anyone else wants to!” Jubilee yells. 

“Couldn’t you have started making out before I got my sight back?” Scott asks. 

“Never!” 

It is easy to reapply the veil, to hide his patchy fur and some of the worse scars. It is even easier to turn around and grin at all of them, shrieking just a little as Peter pulls him into a bridal carry, to join the scattered bundle of his friends underneath the oak tree. 

 

* * *

 

Wanda leans back against the branches of the Oak tree, closing her eyes. In her mind's eye she can see the threads of probability wrapping around her fingers, stretching out over her friends at the bottom of her tree, to the mansion where her dad pretends to play chess with her step-father, out into the world beyond. 

She holds all the threads together. Feeling the song of the universe as it vibrates through her web. Actions and reactions. Scene and Sequel. Cause and Effect. 

Wanda closes her eyes. 

Below her the X-Kids are pushing each other, teasing her brother and Kurt. Marie plays devils advocate, and loudly wonders about the reason why Scott keeps checking his phone. Scott squawks, just making it even worse for himself. Jubilee throws fireworks into the air. Their laughter shakes the canopy of Wanda’s tree. 

In her web, Wanda leans back against the branches. 

And she is happy. 

 

THE END.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a the phrase "Quiet Hands." that used to be told to Autistic children to make them appear more normal. This meant no stimming, no flapping, sit still. Stop being so weird. 
> 
> Things that didn't make it into the fic: Xavier money had to hush up the episode at the mall, otherwise the consequences of that would have been... well, fairly awkward to bad. 
> 
> Jean is the reason that Scott keeps checking his phone. (Her name is Phoenix. They get into spectacular arguments online. He thinks he's just a little bit in love)
> 
> And in a few weeks, Dr Strange will visit the mansion, trying to work out what keeps making his instruments set off...


End file.
